We’ve already lived 10 years past the end of the world and gosh, how quaint 2000 sounds already! Remember Y2K? What I also remember from 2000 is the Windows flavor of the same name. It was the marriage of professional NT robustness with the friendlier interface of Windows 98… Ten years later, that line ended with XP and is finally tweaked to the point of usability with 7. In this issue’s column by Jost you can read about how so many Mac-like features finally made it to the PC with Windows 7 but still on a patched, tired architecture.

On the other hand, the buggy, nascent Mac OS X of 2001 is now fully mature and is rightfully gaining more and more enthusiasts, helped by a support infrastructure second to none: From AppleCare to One-to-One, and including the many online tutorials and ubiquitous Genius Bars all around the country. Apple has blessed Mac users with the sexiest machines, the most advanced operating system, and the most developed customer support. A friend of mine recently purchased the One-to-One service and I was very impressed by the complete website reserved to the service members, notwithstanding the full year of regular tech help appointments.

Ten years later, it is enviable to own a Mac, but it is still a challenge to translate on a Mac. The dearth of tools is disheartening. What is most shocking to me is that there are so few developers conscious of what they could do on that platform. For example, they can integrate the OS’s text editor that supports drag and drop and integrates spellchecking in 15 variations of the 17 languages included in the one and only version of Mac OS X.

If I were independently wealthy, I would offer a challenge to developers: bring your TM engine on top of TextEdit, make an elegant native Cocoa app for Mac users, and win a prize! Maybe we could find a sponsor, or angel, for this prize?

I have met so many new Mac users in New York, for the ATA Conference, and we are not happy about having to continue to run Windows in our Mac to access the better tools. The time has come for a new Trados on the Mac. Will someone get a clue?

Join TransMUG and our movement for a native full-featured translation environment on the Mac at http://transmug.com. YA

Nina
posted this article under Business Tools, Translation on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:03 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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